Home » Posts tagged 'legal' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: legal
Faith in the II.1 is misplaced
Faith in the II.1 is misplaced by employers.
Some of the most impressive people I have ever met never received I or II.1 from Universities. To be frank, some of the most impressive people I have ever met have obtained a II.2. One person I know, who received a II.1 in the Final Honour School of Modern History at Oxford is now a lecturer in Modern History at that University, and I still feel perplexed how he failed to obtain a First in Finals. But actually – even in the world of academia – it doesn’t matter now as he is a renowned expert in a Conservative theorist. The most impressive people in life I have ever met never went to University at all, as it happens.
Law firms have a preoccupation with a II.1, although good recruiters will see past this, and look at the gestalt of an application. Lazy recruiters will use the II.1 as a ‘dividing line’, what is being called in tax circles these days as a ‘cliff edge’.
I think part of the reason why some people I know, who have succeeded in life, obtained a II.2 in finals is because they are actually on-the-whole an impressive range of people with a plethora of outside interests. That of course is the eternal paradox for law recruiters, applicants having to demonstrate an impressive range of extracurricular activities and positions of responsibilities, when the likelihood they need to be thick-skinned young enthusiastic people who are prepared to be subordinate and act as ‘grist to the mill’.
When I was assessing scripts for Finals at Cambridge, as a junior graduate student, I found as an examiner the magic behind the II.1 was not up-to-much. In fact, I felt it was a diagnosis effectively of exclusion, where you would award a I for scripts which were well evidenced and elegantly argued, and II.2 for individuals who essentially knew a lot but simply had not been taught about the importance of structuring this argument crisply. II.2 was for people were bright but lazy, and the not bright. My gut feeling for awarding a I was whether the candidate would be able to write an abstract for a scientific paper, with the evidence clearly presented, points succinctly explained, and appropriate conclusions reached, without being over-voluminous. Our marking guidelines reflected this to some degree.
The argument for using the II.1 as an indicator of ability is that the volume of applications is far too much for legal recruiters to have an alternative mechanism. However, one has to be mindful of the significant minority of good applicants who feel as if they are ‘written off’ or not given a chance, at let’s face an early stage, to be able to prove their value for a law firm. I also worry about the obsession from law firms, particularly in some firms in the City, to select a disproportionate number of Oxbridge graduates. Last time I checked, Cambridge awarded around 75% I and II.1 in certain subjects in Finals anyway, and there are some appalling students at Oxbridge should not be given preference in the jobs market purely on account of the fact they went to Oxbridge.
This post is though utterly pointless. I dare say it’ll be business as usual for law firms, and the counter-argument is that all these apprehensions become filtered out at interview stage. This is of course true, but the vast majority of friends never get invited for interview despite impressive application forms. Their standard response is then of course ‘Go and consult your Careers department’, in a tedious ‘pass the buck’ manner. And it’s back to selecting on the basis of the II.1..
I obtained at least a II.1 for the record in my Finals at Cambridge in 1996.
Fair access to education, promoted by Prof Les Ebdon, is important for law students
Prof Les Ebdon CBE DL is to become Director of Fair Access to higher education.
It has been remarked that Ebdon, throughout his 44 years in higher education, and in particular his period as a vice chancellor, has developed an impressive record in improving access among lower socio-economic groups, from neighbourhoods with low rates of participation, and from black and minority ethnic groups.
Prof Ebdon is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire. He attended Hemel Hempstead Grammar School (became The Hemel Hempstead School in 1970). Ebdon obtained both his BSc in Chemistry in 1968 and PhD in 1971 at Imperial College London. Ebdon was appointed Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University of Luton in 2003, replacing Dai John. With the merger of the University and De Montfort’s Bedford campus in 2006 he became the Vice Chancellor of the new University of Bedfordshire. In August 2009 Ebdon, via the think tank “Million Plus”, made the controversial suggestion that students from less wealthy families be allowed entrance to universities based on lower grades.
BPP University College offers a unique opportunity for widening access to higher education. Like the new University of Luton and Bedfordshire, students want a high-quality professional education, and I am proud to be a student at a place which encourages excellence which is recognised by a plethora of employers. Recently, the Guardian newspaper observed the following.
With shrewd timing, as Scottish universities prepare to charge £9,000 a year to non-Scottish UK students from 2012, BPP University College – the UK’s only for-profit private provider with degree awarding powers – has announced it will set fees at £5,000 a year for its three-year programmes, and £6,000 a year for two-year programmes.
The announcement wasn’t only significant for the contrast with the Scottish universities, but more pertinently because it has deliberately moved to undercut all English universities with the exception of the Open University, which has set its fees at £5,000 for 120 credits (equivalent to a full year of study in a traditional university).
So with BPP aggressively positioning itself to undercut mainstream provision, and with a confident pitch of career-focused courses to deliver on the employability agenda, the foundations are surely set for an aggressive growth strategy to start snapping up increasing numbers of undergraduate students.
Whatever the official statement of BPP is regarding this appointment, which I have nothing to do with, my fellow students at BPP work very hard, and many of us will support the idea of people succeeding irrespective of whether or not they have gone to a ‘prestige’ university at some time in their life. That Les Ebdon has a proven track record in this impresses me. I am also mindful of fair access to education is vital in the wider context of fair access to the legal profession, which many of us have a vested interest in.
The quotation is from an article which first appeared in the Guardian here written by Aaron Porter on 8 September 2010, entitled “First or fail: BPP University College and Edinburgh University fees”. Shibley, the author, is the President of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, a Society run by BPP students for BPP students, to promote the importance of law and regulation to corporate strategy.
The Student Lawyer – a brilliant initiative for law students to embrace
A great initiative for law students to embrace
I think ‘The Student Lawyer’ is a brilliant initiative for law students to embrace. Some say that being a student is the happiest time of a lawyer’s life, as you immerse yourself in a very intensive experience of case law and statute law, and critical thinking. There are many ‘soft skills’ that employers and colleagues look out for, including creativity, teamwork, attention-to-detail, proactivity, a commitment to quality, and a commitment for excellence. They also love clear communication skills. Unsurprisingly, these tend to be the same competences actively sought out on training contract application forms.
I strongly recommend law students to read, comment on, and write for the Student Lawyer, which is an outstanding contribution to legal education. The Twitter thread is relatively new, but well worth a follow! The sections, including contemporary news, civil, crime, education and practice, public, the world, literary review, guest contributions, and opinion, are very well written, and will be interesting to any law student, including barristers and solicitors to-be. New inventive features include the new front page and the ‘panels’, and make for a very rewarding experience for any online legal blog. In this regard, it is probably at the forefront of existing blogs. However, I think it is the quality of helpful articles for the student lawyer that sets this blog apart from its ‘competitors’, such as Amy Dimond’s guide to the LPC (and even solicitors’ accounts!)
I wish the blog very well, as I am hugely passionate about inclusivity. My aspiration is for all students to be at the heart of the legal education system, and contributing online is an excellent way for people to contribute (especially people who are physically disabled like me). In this increasingly competitive environment for training contracts and pupillages, you can do no harm, at the very least, by wishing to write for ‘The Student Lawyer’. People like to take on trainees with bags of energy and enthusiasm, and that is what is in abundance in ‘The Student Lawyer’. Because of the recent informative articles on mooting and the criminal law, this blog may be particularly inspiring for criminal barristers to-be.
Official list of meetings this term by the BPP Legal Awareness Society in the City
The meetings of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, run by students of BPP at the BPP Business School, will take place as follows. All student members of BPP, particularly those in finance, business, marketing, accountancy and law, are most welcome. The BPP Legal Awareness Society wishes to promote commonalities within these professional disciplines. In particular, this Society emphasises the importance of law and regulation to businesses, and an understanding of business strategy to businesses.
Wednesday 2 November 3- 4pm; room L2, BPP Business School St Mary Axe
IPOs and rights issues : the importance of flotations in the City
Wednesday 16 November 3 – 4 pm; room L2, BPP Business School St Mary Axe
Debt finance: investment options for the company
Wednesday 30 November 3 – 4 pm – room L2, BPP Business School St Mary Axe
Joint ventures: practical legal issues for joint ventures
Wednesday 14 December 3 – 4 pm. – room L2, BPP Business School St Mary Axe
Arbitration: mechanisms for dispute resolution for businesses
Is BPP suffering from the "Stockholm Syndrome"? Roll on Friday…
I don’t do ‘undue deference’, which is why I once felt uneasy when a partner at a firm in the Magic Circle carried my bag from one room to the next, when moving rooms in a training contract interview.
That’s why I suppose I love ‘Roll on Friday‘, which, according to them, “provides news, views and gossip on the legal profession – including the top firms’ salaries.” ‘Roll on Friday’ is essential reading for me, as I am thinking about (remotely) applying for a training contract this Summer. However, I am taking my MBA much more seriously, as it genuinely interests me, unlike the training contract application process. We cover in huge detail “organisational culture“, i.e. the importance of what makes a corporate tick to how it involves its members and individuals outside the company. A really useful introduction to corporate culture is given here in the Times newspaper.
This is precisely why I devour articles by ‘Roll on Friday’ which provide insight into culture in the City: e.g. on international corporate law recruitment here, “There were red faces at recruitment firm First Counsel, chosen by Slaughter and May to advertise its vacancies, after it posted a pompous and apparently xenophobic job advertisement.” Or this, for example (!), “A City law firm has announced a “great temporary opportunity’” for fresh-faced law graduates to, errr, work as catering staff.”
And this is precisely the cheeky humour I love, when ‘Roll on Friday’ (@RollOnFridayWeb) tweeted us the following on 28 June 2011 (status here),
“Stockholm Syndrome? RT @legalaware: @carllygo @seeyouatthebar @_millymoo @jfierce_mighty haha. I think BPP is brill #justsaying”
I found this incredibly amusing.
So, what is “Stockholm Syndrome“? Not being as cultured as ‘Roll on Friday’, I had to look it up on Wikipedia. This is the current entry for the condition:
In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxicalpsychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them.
Are members of BPP then showing ‘Stockholm syndrome” towards BPP? Looking at this legalistically, we have to be showing a positive emotional response in conditions of extreme stress. Otherwise known as “terror bonding” or “traumatic bonding”, one has to identify what the extreme stress of being at BPP might be? Is it teaching or studying the GDL, LPC, LLM or MBA, for example? Or is it the highly demanding nature of the exams?
And why my outburst that “BPP is brill”? This boils down to my reaction to a rather vociferous article provided by David Mitchell in the Guardian with the rather aggressive title “When it comes to the crunch, private sector knows best”. David climaxes towards the end with this ‘pièce de résistance':
It’s not expertise, it’s ruthlessness, it’s the prioritisation of profit. What Lygo is offering people running universities is the opportunity to divest themselves of many of the problems inherent in their jobs. If you don’t want to take the tough decisions, he’s saying, if you doubt you’ve got the backbone to make the efficiency savings, then we’ll handle them for you. Pass your troubles on to those of us untroubled by conscience. Not only would this be a dereliction of the universities’ duty, it would also help perpetuate the myth of the private sector’s omnipotence and the public’s doltish money-burning idiocy.
Mitchell is of course entitled to his views. He was, indeed, at Cambridge, which some might say is the world’s best University in the World, beating Harvard. Well, actually, to be accurate, he was there for three years, and I was there for eight as a student (doing several degrees, not re-sitting the same one). Mitchell is talking nonsense if he believes that Oxbridge does not have any commercial drivers. Indeed, the Institute of Economic Affairs has even in a blog article mooted the notion that Cambridge University ‘should go private‘.
And yep – I really enjoyed my GDL and LLB(Hons) because of the huge amount of personal pastoral care I received after my life-threatening meningitis (I was in a coma for two months during my GDL), and Carl Lygo, CEO at BPP, has argued, until he’s ‘blue in the face’, that institutions such as BPP and Cambridge operate in different areas of the education sector, but that ‘there’s room for both of them’ (paraphrasing wildly). Anyway, I think both institutions are great. Maybe I am, in fact, exhibiting “Stockholm Syndrome” towards Cambridge, having been set free from them after nearly a decade? Anyway, please keep up the brilliant work, “Roll on Friday”!
@legalaware can be followed here. @RollonFridayWeb can be followed here.
Should corporate social responsibility be mandatory? Lessons from India.
Azim Hashim Premji (born 24 July 1945) is an Indian business tycoon and philanthropist who is the chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leader in the software industry. According to Forbes, he is currently the third wealthiest Indian with a personal wealth of US$16.8 billion in 2011, as well as being the richest Indian Muslim. In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He was also among the 50 richest people in the world from 1999 to 2005 according to Fobes. In April 2004, he was rated among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He is India’s biggest philanthropist.
Premji says there is no need for a law on mandatory CSR spending. Speaking at a press conference with Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said he felt larger companies had enough social consciousness to take up responsibilities without being told to do so. He also said that the legislation may be abused by companies which is why the government needed to issue certain guidelines. Premji was responding to a question on the government’s plan to make it mandatory for corporates to spend 2 per cent of their average income of three years, as part of the proposed Companies Bill.
Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s opposition to mandatory spending by industry on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities is indeed echoed by others in the IT industry. Infosys Technologies CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan said that this should not be mandated, but it should be voluntary with proper disclosures. Some believe that shareholders ultimately own the company and thus they need to have a say in the matter as well. B Ramaswamy, MD of Sonata Software, said that the process of deciding how much a company must contribute to CSR must be made more democratic.
Extradition – testing the value of human rights
The Conservatives don’t like the Human Rights Act; the Liberal Democrats like it. Now they are in coalition, and have somehow formulated a position on control orders. Extradition is much more difficult, from the point of view of the legislature. The law of extradition from England and Wales was made less complex by the Extradition Act [2003] which was a response to the raised terrorist threat in Europe. Extradition was made much easier.
The judiciary provides relative certainty in this world of uncertainty. The decision by the European Court of Human Rights to block the extradition of Abu Hamza, the radical Muslim cleric, to America to stand trial on alleged terrorist offences poses a challenge to the Coalition government. The Conservatives promised to repeal the Human Rights Act – but that would make no difference because the European Convention on Human Rights would still apply to British law and it is on this that the Strasbourg court relies for its judgments.
It is an absolute prohibition for a signatory to the ECHR to remove anyone to a place where they would be subject to inhumane or degrading treatment. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits “inhuman or degrading punishment”. The article has a long history, expressly evoking the 1688 Bill of Rights, which prohibits “cruell and unusuall punishments”. Unlike other rights, Article 3 is unqualified, which means that a State is not permitted to justify a breach on any grounds. It is now uncontroversial (in the courts, at least) that to return a person to a country where there is a real risk that they will be in danger or torture, loss of life or inhuman or degrading treatment would breach Article 3. Therefore, the courts have no choice but to prevent any extradition or deportation which would put a person at serious risk.
Gary McKinnon has been accused of hacking to various U.S. computers. Gary McKinnon’s legal battle has included a number of appeals to the Administrative Division of the High Court. In July 2009, Lord Justice Burnton rejected his claim that, due to his mental condition, his detention would involve inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which would, if committed in this country, infringe Article 3. The judge held that the bar for inhuman and degrading treatment had been set high in previous cases, and stated that McKinnon also claimed under Article 8, the right to private and family life, but this was also rejected, as his extradition was found to be a lawful and proportionate response to his alleged offending. Unlike Article 3, Article 8 is a qualified right, which means that it can be overrided if there is a strong public interest in doing so.
The case has now been adjourned by the Home Secretary so she can consider the medical evidence afresh. Geoffrey Robertson QC calls this a test case for principles and suggests that the Home Secretary’s “main difficulty will be to override her Home Office advisers who have for years fought an unremitting, expensive and merciless battle against this poor man and his indomitable mother” However, the legislature – or rather an important part of it – has meant this story has taken, for the time-being, a turn for the worse. Nick Clegg, last week, said it would be ‘better all round’ for the two not to discuss the details of the case, which has now been grinding on for seven years. The Americans are demanding the extradition of Gary, 45, despite medical experts warning he will kill himself if sent to the U.S. for trial. Mr Clegg had been implacable in his support for Gary in opposition. He stood by Mrs Sharp’s side at a demonstration outside the Home Office in December 2009.
What we do not have is clarity on the future of the Human Rights Act. Mr Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, said Britain would seek to kick-start reform of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court on Human Rights when it takes up a key role in Europe later this year. However, Lord Justice Woolf has signalled there is very little chance of anything changing because it would mean persuading 47 countries who are all signed up to the Convention. The Prime Minister has announced a commission to examine the creation of a British Bill of Rights and the country’s relationship with the European court. Lord Woolf, who was the country’s most senior judge between 2000 and 2005, said a Bill of Rights would also cause conflict between the two.
The upshot for David Cameron and Nick Clegg – talk is cheap, when the future of human rights in individual people are at stake.
The future of control orders
A friend of mine tweeted this morning: “254,998,923 laptops taken out of hand luggage and then 254,998,923 put back into hand luggage: success or fail?”
On issues of national security, many members of the general public should like to believe that they have an integral influence in matters of national security, the legislators, we all admit, decide upon national policy. Ultimately it is the Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, who is able to propose legislation on the basis of her advisors, the think tanks, the public, the media, the police, the rest of the judicial system, and of course the intelligence services MI5, MI6. Obviously, it is impossible to ignore the raft of events, such as 9/11 and the Mumbai bombing. There is in face a growing notion internationally, irrespective of political affiliations, that in the wake of September 11th, many civil liberties had been curtailed or suspended. There has been historical disagreement concerning how much risk to national security or civil liberties should be taken.
The need to achieve an appropriate balance of these seemingly competing goals was evident. In the USA, lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Army called for aggressive prosecution of the terrorist proven suspects, while lawyers advocating civil liberties argue strongly for the safeguarding of individual rights, lest we cede victory to terrorists through the compromise of principles that define our view of a liberal democracy.
We are surprisingly at one here with the U.S., reflecting a strong entrenchment of our law in European law as a result of the European Communities Act (1972) (as amended), and numerous subsequent treaties. The legal notion of ‘proportionality’ originally developed in European Law, but it has been readily applied in English Law in the House of Lords and Supreme Court. One specific definition of proportionality given by Lord Lowry in the leading British case ‘Brind’, which examined the principle as one that requires a reasonable relation between a decision, its objective and the circumstances of any given case. This concise definition shows how proportionality is a theory that is ultimately intuitive to human nature. A vast majority feel that Labour went too far in the counter-terrorism legislation, which is a massive own goal in that one of the first achievements of Tony Blair was to introduce the Human Rights Act (1997).
In fact, Labour has had terms in coming to terms with their past on crucial matters of civil liberties, in lengths of detention and ID cards. For example, officers used Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 101,248 times but just 506 of those stopped were taken into custody and none on suspicion of plotting terror attacks. Furthermore, Home Office data provide that no terror suspect was held for more than 14 days before being charged, just half the 28-day limit brought in by the last Government. Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights group Liberty, insisted Section 44 was a “crude and blunt instrument” that was also counter-productive. Shami Chakrabarti further said: “It costs us dearly in race equality and consent=based policing with very little in terms of enhanced security.” I fully agree.
Another bone of contention are ‘control orders’, also introduced under 2005 anti-terrorism legislation. Ministers have to sign an order to place a terrorism suspect under close supervision that some say is similar to house arrest. The orders were introduced after the then Law Lords declared that the previous system of detaining foreign terrorism suspects without trial, or without prospect of deportation, breached human rights. The previous Labour government said it still needed a mechanism, which would allow it to control the lives of some suspects whom it said it could not prosecute because of the rules over the use of secret intelligence in trials.
Control orders were originally introduced as an alternative to putting people in prison, that originally was supposed to not leave individuals suffering from a breach of liberty and personal freedom (1995). Obviously, curtailing this liberty and personal freedom has to be a necessary, balanced and proportional response to a threat of national security, and the Law Lords have thus far said that control records are legal. However, not everyone sees it this way. The issue of control orders, under which terror suspects are placed under “virtual house arrest”, is the one of the most sensitive civil liberties issues for ministers as opposition to Labour’s authoritarian counter-terror policy was seen as part of the glue that made the coalition possible.
Tom Brake MP, the co-chair of the Lib Dem home affairs parliamentary party committee, has said there was no evidence to suggest that control orders were effective in preventing terrorism. The other signatories of the letter, Baroness Sally Hamwee, and Lord Martin Thomas, represent Lib Dem peers. As the English legal system is a system of precedent, I feel that it any changes to the law could be introduced, but it would be their Lordships’ prerogative to decide whether any subsequent changes to the law are legal or not. And I fully trust Lords Hoffman, Neuberger and Baroness Hale, amongst others, to analyze with the legal issues with great precision if or when the time should come.
According to the most up to date figures for January 2010, there are 12 control orders in force – three fewer than a year before. Some 45 people have been subject to the controls since the system was created. Six of the foreign nationals held under the restrictions have been deported. The political situation is messy, as reflected in a rather informal conversation between Baroness Kennedy and Theresa May on the Andrew Marr show this morning. Liberal Democrats have openly warned David Cameron for the first time that any decision not to scrap control orders would jeopardise the coalition’s civil liberties credentials.
Senior Lib Dem backbenchers and peers have also written to Downing Street pressing for the limit on detention without charge to be cut from 28 days to 14 days, arguing that two-weeks is a “wholly adequate” time to bring charges, even in the most complicated cases of multiple terrorist attacks. The intervention from Lib Dem MPs and peers comes after an intense lobbying campaign by the security services. Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, recently wrote to Cameron saying that he could not guarantee the safety of the public if the control order regime was scrapped. Whitehall officials confirm that MI5 has played its “full part in the debate”. The review of counter-terrorism powers was set up immediately after the general election, with a specific remit to look urgently at the future of control orders and the wider matter of counter-terror measures and programmes.
The home secretary, Theresa May, is thought to have recently supported the retention of control orders as a necessary intervention despite repeated interventions by Nick Clegg, whose Lib Dem manifesto clearly had called for them to be scrapped. It feels as if a pendulum over civil liberties is still in damped smooth harmonic motion, but at least the review and the Supreme Court will help the UK legislature and public reach a stable equilibrium.
